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“Yasemin and Nirmala: A Tale of Two Teens” tells the story of Yasemin McGinty-Mahsud, a fifteen-year-old Pakistani-American teen who loses her right arm in an accident, and that of fifteen-year-old Nirmala Rao-Sumatzkuku, a South-Asian/Native-American teen who is confined to a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy. The story begins with the celebration of Yasemin’s fifteenth birthday, a celebration marred by her own ‘navel-gazing’, as her BFF Natalie Riccardo reminds her. Her self-hatred increases when the school plans to stage “Seussical Musical” as the end-of-the-school-year event. She assumes that her ‘unfinished’ body will automatically exclude her from participating in the play – her father’s mention of Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of Richard III, and the king’s “deform’d, unfinish’d” body haunts her as she indulges in even greater self-pity.The arrival in school of Nirmala Rao-Sumatzkuku, girl challenged by cerebral palsy, transforms Yasemin’s limited perspective of the world around her. Nirmala’s South-Asian father Mahesh Rao, and Hopi mother Chu’si Sumatzkuku have home-schooled her all these years. But her strength of purpose, positive attitude towards life, and irrepressible whimsy encourage them to send her to a brick-and-mortar school. Although her cerebral palsy limits her speech and movements, Nirmala’s buoyancy of spirit immediately wins over many of her classmates. The same spirit intrigues Yasemin, who is at first suspicious of Nirmala’s lust for life. Suspicion very soon changes to gratitude and admiration as Nirmala asks for her help in writing a musical entitled “My soul for a Jelly Donut.”Yasemin’s neighbor, an old Jewish man called Jakob Cohen, is yet another source of inspiration and comfort. Yasemin senses the depth of grief the old man feels at the loss of his wife. She discovers a new awareness of life around her, of neighbors she had hitherto ignored or was unaware of. She hears Mr. Cohen play the violin. Her own passion for singing forges an unusual bond between the two. He accompanies her on his Steinway. Mr. Cohen’s grandson Jeremy joins him on his viola, and love is in the air!Much to Yasemin’s mixed emotions of delight and anxiety, Nirmala gives her a prominent role in the musical. Cast opposite to Ravi Beresford, a line-backer who has stolen many a heart, she has many a ‘What ifs?’. What if he rejected her? What if he were to sneer at her missing arm? These doubts are cast aside when old Mr. Cohen sends her a beautiful dress that had belonged to his wife, and Yasemin’s mother says: “Perfection is in the eyes of the beholder.”

My two-volumed “Veiled Murders” is for those readers of archaeological fiction that delve into ancient civilisations! Beginning 4,500 years ago in the Indus Valley Civilisation, my writing turns to the 19th century when British archaeologists discover this civilisation, and one of them is murdered before he can reveal a much older murder committed during that ancient civilisation! A third segment rushes us forward to the 21st century, when modern day archaeologists not only solve the two murders, but solve the riddle of the ancient Harappan script, an achievement that continues to elude present-day research!

This is awesome – my two 70+year-old female sleuths Leela and Meena may appear on your Netflix list! Yes, they have been approached as possible stars in a dramatised version of “Murders Most Matronly”! Do keep your combined fingers and toes crossed that this will happen very very soon!

Amazon has just published some more of the cousins’ adventures! “Mummified Murders” will take you to Egypt, “Murder in the Coconut Groves” exposes you to the dark side of village life in South India, and “Murders in the Ivory Tower” will remind you of those (un?)-forgettable days in college!

Amazon has just added this to the list of my books! Do check it out and let me what you think

Leela and Meena, those intrepid South-Asian sleuths, are pulled once again out of their quiet retired lives in Tucson, Arizona, to figure out why young women are disappearing from a university dorm in Istanbul, Turkey. The reader knows that a modern-day Harun-al-Rashid has decided to recreate those exotic nights. He has abducted Faridha Ahmed, a scholar of Middle Eastern Studies, who has just arrived in Istanbul. In his fantasy, she is his ‘Scheherazade’, chosen to tell him the stories from the original Arabic. But he reverses the original challenge Scheherazade had to face. Instead of weaving story upon story to defer her execution, Scheherazade is ordered in this 21st century version to bring each story to an incontrovertible end, failing which the ‘king’ will execute a young woman. This may very well turn out to a mass murder of a gigantic scale. Our detectives get some promising leads. The kidnapped woman has been doing extensive research on the Arabic translation of the Thousand and One Nights. What is it that drives the kidnapper to recreate those ancient times?

Sally Benson was about to help Lalli down the steps of the
school bus when her twelve-year-old charge grabbed her crutches and hurried as
quickly as she could into the house. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. In two hours,
she would be crossing the road to celebrate the birthdays of two very dear
friends, Mi-hi and Kumuda. But first she had to wrap the gifts she had bought
after weeks of searching for the perfect gifts. She had finally had to consult
the birthday girls’ dads. And now she knew she had the most perfect gifts ever!

Amma helped Lalli into an outfit she had bought for the
party: dark blue chinos that would actually go over her PROSTHETIC leg, and a
navy floral print tee. At exactly 5:29 Lalli and Nitin were ready to leave.
They could hear sounds of music from across the street. Lalli wasn’t too happy about
her kid brother tagging along.

“Does he have to?” she had grumbled to their
parents. “They are my friends!
And he’ll just …”

Lalli had sulked for a minute, then relented. She suddenly
remembered how Nitin had been EXTRAORDINARILY supportive during those first
awful weeks after the ACCIDENT. Well, not that he wasn’t a brat now.

“But he’ll just …”

Nitin had stuck his tongue out at her. Lalli had grinned and
stopped whining.

They crossed the street to their friends’ home. There was no
way Lalli could keep up with Nitin. He and his two legs! He bolted across the
street. But she was pretty quick with her crutches too. Dr. Sandburne had given
her a whole list of exercises to increase her mobility. She had to admit that
she had been very scared of returning to school, but her classmates’ super
enthusiastic welcome had chased away all her fears. Her homeroom teacher Ms.
Gatsby had called her a second Jessica Cox.

Jessica Cox

“Jessica was born without arms. She does everything
using her feet as you children would use your hands: she flies planes, drives
cars, does all the normal, everyday things you and I would do using our hands
and feet. And today, Jessica holds the titles of the first person without arms
in the American Tae Kwon-Do Association to get a black belt, and the first
woman pilot in aviation history to fly using her feet.”

Nanna had shown her a photograph of Rabiya receiving a
National Youth Award in 1993:

“Her name is Kariveppil Rabiya. Polio crippled both her
legs when she was only seventeen. But that has not prevented her from becoming
a social worker. She has been tirelessly campaigning to educate more adults,
especially women in her home state of Kerala, and elsewhere in India.”

“She is bound to her wheelchair, but she is one of the
most amazing women I have known,” Amma had added. “I met her a few
years ago in Kerala – you know where Kerala is, right?”

“Yes, Amma! It’s in South India!” Lalli said in a
resigned voice.

“Just checking! So – I visited schools funded by a
volunteer organization that Rabiya started in Kerala. The school is for
physically and mentally challenged children.”

“That’s so cool! I’ll do something like that too, right,
Amma? You know what? I’ll make PROSTHETICS for all the poor kids all
over the world who can’t afford them. I’ll study science and invent something,
and have pots and pots of money, and …”

“I know, I know,” Lalli had admitted. “I talk
too much. But …” Her face had brightened again. “But wouldn’t it be
wonderful if I could create a new kind of PROSTHETIC leg that would look
exactly like a real leg, with nerves and veins and all?”

She had looked down at her shiny new leg and had stroked it
lovingly:

“Not that this leg isn’t awesome.”

The front door of their friends’ home was wide open. As they
entered the living room clutching gifts for Mi-hi and Kumuda, Lalli saw hundreds
of balloons that had floated up to the ceiling, declaring in bold red letters:

“Mi-hi
and Kumuda– HAPPY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY!”

The girls’ parents Ronald Armstrong and Anuraag Kulkarni
were really cool. Of course, her own parents were okay, too. But Ronald and
Anuraag – they were something else. For Halloween they had transformed their
house into a haunted mansion with screeches and howls and rattling skeletons.
And the four of them had dressed up as the Addams Family. They were definitely
Lalli’s most favorite neighbors. No, that wasn’t quite true. Old Mr. Steave in
the house bang opposite to theirs was wonderful too. He was a MENNONITE. She
remembered how after the ACCIDENT (this word had been life-changing for her)
when she was confined to a wheelchair, she had begun seeing the old man, really
seeing him. She had not only helped
distract him from grieving over his dead wife, but had uncovered a mystery that
had allowed him to keep his house and even gain a new family.[3]

Lalli was curious
about her friends having two men for parents. But Amma and Nanna had explained what
gay meant. A man could love another man, just like Amma and Nanna loved each
other. It was called HOMOSEXUALITY (homo
meant genus – she had learned all about AUSTRALOPITHECINE, HOMO HABILIS, HOMO
ERECTUS, AND HOMO SAPIENS in science class). But because only a woman was BIOLOGICALLY
equipped to give birth to a baby, Ronald and Anuraag had adopted Mi-hi and
Kumuda. They had also exchanged MARITAL vows the previous year. In fact, Lalli’s
friend Sharon knew all about it. Her dad, a JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, had performed
the ceremony.

“How come they have a birthday, like, on the same day?
Are they, like, twins or something?” Nitin had asked her the previous
evening.

“No, silly! Mi-hi is Korean, and Kumuda is from
South-Asia. They were ABANDONED by their mothers. That means, their mothers
couldn’t look after them,” Lalli explained, an ‘I-am-your-older-sister-I
–know-so-much-more’ tone tingeing her voice. “Ronald found Mi-hi at a
local hospital in Seoul when working as an interpreter for the US army in Yongsan
Garrison in Seoul. And Anuraag discovered Kumuda in New Delhi when someone took
her from the auto-rickshaw where her mom had left her to an ORPHANAGE.”

“So they were, like, born on the same day? That’s so
COOL!!!”

‘No, Dumbo! Since Anuraag and Ronald didn’t know when
exactly Mi-hi and Kumuda were born, they just chose a day – RANDOMLY.”

Mi-hi glared at her sister. She placed her ear against the
wrapped box and listened intently. Frowning, she sat down on the carpet, tenderly
untied the bow, and carefully peeled off the tape that kept the wrapping paper
together. Kumuda hid her face in her hands, unable to bear the suspense.
Lalli’s face tightened as Mi-hi removed what looked like an old-fashioned
mechanical typewriter. She jumped up and clapped her hands delightedly.

“The Germans
used very sophisticated technology to create a machine with which they could
send messages that would be practically impossible to decipher. In fact, do you
know that our present-day computer is the direct descendant of the Enigma Machine?”

Lalli asked: “The Germans sent codes to spy on
us?”

He bent down and gently removed the machine from Mi-hi’s
unwilling hands.

“Look here. See how the wheels inside are placed? They
are the key to figuring out the messages. When you know in what order the
wheels are placed, you can break the code. Each wheel rotates after a certain
number of letters are typed, so the cipher is continuously changing within a
message. And that makes it much harder to encipher the messages.”

“Wow! You didn’t tell me all this when I asked you what
Mi-hi would like for her birthday, Anuraag!” Lalli gasped. “I know
you are an expert CRYPTOGRAPHER. But when you said you could get this machine
from someone who collects World War II souvenirs, I really truly didn’t know
what to expect!”

Anuraag plugged the machine into a wall socket.

“See how it lights up? We can play with it later on.
But …”

“Dad?” Mi-hi tugged Anuraag’s sleeve impatiently.

“Yes, Mi-hi, you may take it into my study. I know you
want to try it out. It’s an old machine. I’ve replaced the old frayed cord with
a new one. So, we’re all set to go!”

Mi-hi smiled, unplugged and picked up the machine with
Anuraag’s help, and they carried it into the study. She didn’t remove her eyes
once from the machine, even as her dad gently pushed her down into a chair. He
looked lovingly at this twelve-year-old girl who never ceased to amaze him with
her extraordinary ability to focus on things. He planted a kiss on her head,
and returned to a chaotic scene: kids were piling into the living room, Ronald
was darting here and there, desperately trying to manage food, kids, and gifts.

“Anuraag, help!” he yelled. They hurried into the
kitchen and carried back two cakes, one chocolate – Kumuda’s favorite – and the
other a mousse cake with a caramel topping – Mi-hi’s favorite. Twelve candles
graced the top of each one. Lalli looked around. The couple stood back with a
sigh of relief.

“Time to get that absentee daughter of ours,”
Ronald said with a smile. “I’ll go get her.”

“Wait!” Lalli cried out. “Let me! I want to
see how long it’ll take her to hear me!”

“Okay, Lalli! Thanks!”

Lalli guided her crutches to the study, pushed the door
open, and yelled:

“Mi-hi! Come on! Everyone’s waiting!”

There was no reply. The room was empty, the window open.

“Just like her to wander off into the garden, just to play
with that new toy!”

[2]
Kariveppil Rabiya (born 1966) is a physically challenged social worker from
Vellilakkadu, Malappuram, Kerala in India, who rose to prominence through her
role in the Kerala State Literacy Campaign in Malappuram district in 1990. Her
efforts were recognized at a national level by the Government of India on
multiple occasions. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._V._Rabiya)

“Malgudi Days,” a collection of short stories by the famous Indian writer R. K. Narayan, was my inspiration forf “Bandilanka’s Forgotten Lives.” Narayan portrayed the many faces of life in the fictional town of Malgudi. My Bandilanka serves a similar purpose. However, whereas Narayan’s stories are peopled by men and dogs, mine run the gamut of caste, class, gender, and age. Here is a taste from the short story “Night soil removers Kaavanna and Kondamma”:

The last rays of the sun disappeared below the western shore
of the Godavari River. Kaavanna squatted at the threshold of his hut, smoking
the first bidi of the night. There would be many more during the next twelve
hours. Without his bidis, the stench would be overpowering. He inhaled the last
bit of smoke deeply into his damaged lungs, and got up slowly, trying not to
look at the blood he had just coughed up. He wondered, as he did every night,
how much longer he would be able to survive. He glanced at his wife of four
decades. She had inserted the lit end of the bidi into her mouth so that the smoke
would go more directly into her lungs. That was the way of the Paky people.
Kaavanna’s bleeding gums had stopped him from smoking this way. Kondamma
finished her smoke and spat.

“Come, husband!” she whispered, tapping him gently
on the shoulder. “No time to waste!”

She had given him three daughters and two sons. All of them
were scavengers, just like their parents. Karma! There was no escaping one’s
karma. They were Paky, the lowest of the Relli caste. The Relli thought they
were so superior! They gathered fruit and sold them. And that gave them the
right to steal all the Government benefits. Not
that this Government does much for the likes of us. He spat as he thought
of the government. It was always the same, always the same unending misery and
hunger.

If only he could get
his children out of this cesspool. But how? He rubbed the small of his back. His
own health was rapidly failing. He had neither the strength nor the will to
live. The ‘nalla mandu’[1]
that he was taking in increasing quantities was becoming more expensive. And
the pain was unbearable.

“Here!”

His wife handed him the tools of their trade: a brush, a bucket, a metal scraper, and a wooden
scoop.

“Kondamma, you should
stay home today. We’ll manage. You know you are …”

“Yes,
yes!”

Kondamma aggressively
tucked the end of her sari around her waist.

“Listen
carefully, husband! If I allowed my monthly shame to interfere with our work,
you would all be starving by now.”

She called out to
their children who were hastily swallowing flattened rice puffed up in a little
watery milk. Kondamma handed each of them a bagful of raw peanuts that a farmer
from the neighboring village had given them for cleaning his latrines.

“Don’t eat them
all at once!” she cautioned. “And don’t forget those jute scarves for
your faces. Did you soak them in sesame oil?”

“Yes,
Amma!” came the chorus-like response from five teenage voices. Her oldest
– a son – would turn nineteen in a couple of months. She sighed.

“Husband, we
don’t have any kerosene left. It will be hard.”

Kerosene had become
too expensive. And without it, the stench from the latrines would be like
entering narakam.[2]

The group picked up the
soiled gunny bags that contained their tools. Kaavanna whispered:

“Time to go! We
have to get there before the early morning trains block the tracks.”

Today’s work was
along the railway tracks in the Bandilanka station. The amount of human excreta
along the tracks was one of the less onerous of the tasks facing them every
night. They wouldn’t have to climb down into the big holes of the pig toilets.
Kondamma shuddered. Her worst nightmare was imagining she was choking to death
in the putrefying muck. Her sins in a previous life must have been horrific
indeed for her to be reborn into this most dehumanizing of tasks.

Seven figures slunk
along the side roads and back alleys to get to the railway station, avoiding
the main roads. It would be safer that way. If people spotted them, they either
threw garbage at them, stoned them, or came at them with lathis.[3]
“Unclean pigs!” The cry never varied. “Daridram![4]
Daridram! Unclean pigs! Unclean pigs!”

The tracks were
glistening after an early morning shower. Kaavanna bent down to feel the
ground.

“We have a few
hours to work. When the station master comes out early morning at the sun’s
first rays, he will not want to lay eyes on us – it would be a bad omen for
him. He’s a Brahmin.”

The seven spaced
themselves along the track. Using wooden hand scoops, each followed a segment
of the track and collected waste from between the rails. An exhausting two
hours later Kondamma cried out:

“We will pause
here. Eat some of those peanuts! And Rangamma, go quickly to the pump …”

Older daughter
Rangamma took out a brass pitcher from her bag.

“The one outside
the station house? But Amma …”

“Yes, I know.
We’re not allowed there. But at this time … just be careful! And try to get as
much water as you can!”

Rangamma slowly
walked to the water pump. Kaavanna took out a bidi, but before he could light
it he collapsed on the iron rails.

“Deva,
deva!” she moaned, looking at her husband’s mouth. It was covered with
bloody froth. She knew there was no hope for them here.

“Help me carry
him home!” she ordered her trembling children. “His heart is still
beating.”

Eighteen-year-old Venkatabaabu
lifted his father’s frail body, and walked towards the station house.

“Amma, we need
our money first! For medicines. The station master Reddy garu, we have to ask
him.”

He knocked on the
door. A middle-aged man clad in the
uniform of a station master emerged. He stopped at the sight of Venkatabaabu
and covered his nose with a starched white handkerchief.

“Yes, what is
it? Don’t tell me you have completed your job.”

“Reddy garu,
our father – he is very ill, perhaps dying even. We need some money to pay for
the medicines, for the Vaidya.”

“What
impertinence!” Reddy screamed. “You get paid only for finished work!
Go back this minute! You people, you expect us to feed and clothe you for
nothing?”

“No, Reddy
garu, but …”

“So! Well, you
won’t get paid and that is my final word.”

The pompous station
master twirled his walrus moustache, and banged the door shut in Venkatabaabu’s
face. Inside the house, he grinned and counted the money he had kept from the
scavengers – a hundred Rupees, but he’d be able to buy a bottle of country
liquor with the money.

“It’s no use,
Venkatabaabu. We have to hurry!” Kondamma whispered. “Our Vaidya[5] will
help. When we visited him a month ago, he gave us free medication. No one else
will touch us.”

She looked anxiously
at her husband. His breathing was becoming shallower by the minute. Was that a
whisper? He was trying to say something.

“Wait!”
she said to her son. “Put him down! He’s trying to tell us
something.”

Kaavanna looked at his family through
tear-filled eyes.

“My wife, my
children, this is the end of the road. I know the moment has come for me to
leave this life.”

His voice trembled
as he spoke his last wish:

“You will
scatter my ashes in the waters of Mother Godavari. My blessings on you
all.”

His eyes closed. The
breathing stopped. Quietly, his family carried him home.

A week later, the
local Telugu language newspaper reported:

“TRAGEDY AT RAILWAY TRACKS!

ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOY SLIPS
ON FECAL MATTER, KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS,
RUN OVER BY TRAIN!

BREAKING NEWS, 4. April, 2018: The eleven-year-old son of our local
station master Ramayya Reddy was tragically run over by the morning express
from Hyderabad when he slipped on fecal matter that hadn’t been removed from the
tracks. Ramayya Reddy has been arrested for gross negligence in mismanaging the
cleanliness of the tracks. He has been accused of underpaying or pocketing the
money owed to manual scavengers. There have been protests about fatalities
resulting from scavenging. But this time a widespread strike by manual
scavengers is directed at Mr. Reddy for gross abuse and exploitation. The
Corporation is investigating the case.

Kondamma wiped her eyes as she read the news item.

“Come, Amma! It is time to go.”

At the shores of the Godavari, five figures jointly poured
the ashes from a brass pot into the waters of the river, as their mother
chanted a prayer to the gods for the souls of her husband and the boy martyred
on those railway tracks.

At a recent librarian’s convention in Williamsburg, my “Lalli’s Window” generated a lot of interest (and buying power!). The appearance of a eleven-year-old South-Asian girl who loses a leg in an accident brought tears to the eyes of another eleven-year-old girl who asked me when I was signing the book for her: “Did she HAVE to lose a leg?” It broke my heart, but I felt at that moment that it changed that empathic girl’s perception of the world around her, as it did my Lalli’s!